Read­ing Time: 2 minutes

Introduction  

In last Sunday Gos­pel (Matt 21:28–32), Jesus reminded the reli­gious lead­ers (priests and eld­ers) that those they regard as sin­ners (tax col­lect­ors, pros­ti­tutes, and oth­ers) make it to the king­dom of God, while they them­selves do not. In this Sunday Gos­pel (Matt 21:33–43), with the par­able of the unfaith­ful ten­ant farm­ers, Jesus informs the same reli­gious lead­ers that due to their unfaith­ful­ness, the king­dom of God will be taken away from them and entrus­ted to those who know its value, and who will take prop­er care of it. Since these reli­gious lead­ers can­not guar­an­tee justice and right­eous­ness, there is no need leav­ing the king­dom of God in their hands, else they con­vert it to their own king­dom where injustice, cor­rup­tion and reck­less­ness reign (cf. Isa 5:7).

The reward for wickedness 

“Now when the own­er of the vine­yard comes, what will he do to those ten­ants? They said to him, he will put those wretches to a miser­able death, and lease the vine­yard to oth­er ten­ants who will give him the pro­duce at the har­vest time” (Matt 21:40–41). As the say­ing goes, as you make your bed, so you lie on it. There are no actions without con­sequence. The con­tinu­ous send­ing of his ser­vants, was an attempt on the part of the landown­ers to make the ten­ants reas­on and under­stand they should respect the con­tract. If he could par­don their killing of his ser­vants, he will nev­er for­give them for mur­der­ing his own son. Accord­ing to the chief priests and the eld­ers, the landown­er will deal mer­ci­lessly with those wicked ten­ants and put them to a miser­able death. There­after, he will now give the vine­yard to oth­er ten­ants who will respect the agree­ment and give to the landown­er his own share of the pro­duce at the har­vest time. There­fore, the reward for wicked­ness is death. Not just phys­ic­al death, but espe­cially spir­itu­al death.

FOR DETAILS, GET YOUR OWN COPY OF THE BOOK “THE WORD OF LIFE: SUNDAY REFLECTIONS” (vol. I)!! The reflec­tion for the 27^th Sunday is found on pages 470–477. Happy reading!

For details on how to get it, con­tact the author on this link: https://m.me/uchennabiblia?fbclid=IwAR2yeg4a6sDGBp9QGkIvKj6FSADumMokN6lshdE0zuo-JHs6qOmlhA7jyHo or email me at: postmaster@uchennabiblia.com or simply send an SMS on 08116100926, and I will get back to you.

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